Arthur Eddington Quotes

Quotes about:

• The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.

  Arthur Eddington

  Thinking, Ideas, Design

  57 Copy quote

• You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star.

  Arthur Eddington

  Stars, Flower, Petals

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• Something unknown is doing we don't know what-that is what our theory amounts to.

  Arthur Eddington

  Knowledge, Science, Theory

  Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1933). “The nature of the physical world”

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• The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness.

  Arthur Eddington

  World, Consciousness, Abstract

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• We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'.

  Arthur Eddington

  Learning, Math, Thinking

  "A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations" by Alan L. Mackay, (p. 79), 1991.

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• If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

  Arthur Eddington

  Hope, Science, Errors

  "The Nature of the Physical World" by Arthur Eddington, (Ch. 4), 1928.

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• Events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them.

  Arthur Eddington

  Grace, Events, Happens

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• Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.

  Arthur Eddington

  Children, Cutting, Men

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• Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.

  Arthur Eddington

  Truth, Responsibility, May

  Sir Arthur Eddington (2013). “New Pathways In Science”, p.236, Read Books Ltd

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• The pursuit of truth in science transcends national boundaries. It takes us beyond hatred and anger and fear. It is the best of us.

  Arthur Eddington

  Hatred, Anger And Fear, Boundaries

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• Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.

  Arthur Eddington

  Nature, Light, Intellectual

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• We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the foot-print. And Lo! it is our own.

  Arthur Eddington

  Success, Nature, Science

  Space, Time and Gravitation (p. 131)

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• I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.

  Arthur Eddington

  Stars, Important, Atoms

  1928 Stars and Atoms, lecture 1.

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• Do not put too much confidence in experimental results until they have been confirmed by theory.

  Arthur Eddington

  Too Much, Results, Theory

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• If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.

  Arthur Eddington

  Book, Writing, Army

  The Nature of the Physical World ch. 4 (1928)

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• An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water.

  Arthur Eddington

  Ocean, Science, Engineering

  32 Copy quote

• Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me ... I should like to find a genuine loophole.

  Arthur Eddington

  Order, Should, Genuine

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• We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.

  Arthur Eddington

  Stars, Atheism, Gone

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• In Einstein's theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets out with a sieve.

  Arthur Eddington

  Men, Quests, Physics

  Arthur Eddington (2012). “New Pathways in Science: Messenger Lectures (1934)”, p.267, Cambridge University Press

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• It cannot be denied that for a society which has to create scarcity to save its members from starvation, to whom abundance spells disaster, and to whom unlimited energy means unlimited power for war and destruction, there is an ominous cloud in the distance though at present it be no bigger than a man's hand.

  Arthur Eddington

  War, Distance, Mean

  Arthur Eddington (2012). “New Pathways in Science: Messenger Lectures (1934)”, p.163, Cambridge University Press

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• Never accept a fact until it has been verified by theory.

  Arthur Eddington

  Facts, Accepting, Theory

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• I believe there are 15, 747, 724, 136, 275, 002, 577, 605, 653, 961, 181, 555, 468, 044, 717, 914, 527, 116, 709, 366, 231, 425, 076, 185, 631, 031, 296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.

  Arthur Eddington

  Believe, Numbers, Mathematics

  1938 Tarner Lecture.

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• It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control. It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.

  Arthur Eddington

  Law, Mind, May

  Arthur Eddington (2012). “The Philosophy of Physical Science: Tarner Lectures (1938)”, p.179, Cambridge University Press

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• It is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.

  Arthur Eddington

  Stars, Future, Simple

  Arthur S. Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1926). “The Internal Constitution of the Stars”, p.393, Cambridge University Press

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• Time is the supreme Law of nature.

  Arthur Eddington

  Law, Time Management, Supreme

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